ENGAGEMENT AND REACH

The War Child brand is an extremely important tool in helping us create awareness, maintain our reputation and enhance our visibility. It also helps us engage stakeholders to support our mission to create a global movement for peaceful futures for children affected by war and conflict.

War Child enjoys a strong reputation in our home market in the Netherlands. We managed to strengthen that reputation over the course of 2016 through two major projects - the ‘Jij&IK’ TV special and the TeamUp coalition. This was a very welcome development as the preceding two years saw our brand position weaken slightly at the same time as media attention towards armed conflict actually increased.

2016 saw us further develop our position as an expert organisation in the area of children affected by conflict and increasingly talk about our expertise and results. This strategy turned out to be very successful in terms of press exposure - the year saw an increase in the number of interviews with our Managing Director, our Goodwill Ambassadors and expert representatives of our organisation.

The overarching strategic goal of the Marketing, Communications and Fundraising (MCF) department is to create a global movement for peaceful futures for children affected by war and conflict. To help create this movement, our engagement activities will focus on the following target groups:

• Friends (individual donors): structural donors, one-off donors, third-party organisers of actions, major donors, volunteers, kids (eight to twelve year-olds)

• International donors

• Influencers (politicians (advocacy), Goodwill Ambassadors)

• Press and media

• Business organisations

• Institutional donors

We will maintain a strong relationship with these target groups by pursuing an open and two-way communications strategy. We will treat everyone who offers us their support as our Friend - whether it’s people supporting us with their time, money or voices.

We will only be able to maintain a strong relationship with our supporters through maintaining a good conversation with them. We see the commitment from our supporters as being equivalent to friendship. We can ask them for help - but we also find it important to invest in our relationships and give them something back in return.